Making flying taxis: Inside the Bell Helicopter-Uber collaboration

Bell Helicopter is one of a handful of aircraft manufacturers working with Uber to develop and build the flying taxis that project backers say will provide app-based, on-demand air transportation in large, urban areas.

Executives at Bell, the Fort Worth-based division of aerospace and defense giant Textron (NYSE: TXT), are highly confident that they’ll beat out other Uber collaborators to be the original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, when the project gets off the ground.

In addition to making the electric air taxis that will fly travelers from Point A to Point B at the touch of an app, Bell is considering the possibility of being an operator or a booking engine in the air taxi business.

Those were a couple of the revelations I learned during a tour of Bell and a series of exclusive interviews with company leaders this week.

In addition to Bell, Uber is partnering with Aurora Flight Sciences, Embraer, Mooney and Pipistrel Aircraft to develop the aircraft for the flying taxi project.

Scott Drennan, Bell’s director of Innovation, likes Bell’s chances of being named the sole or at least one of the manufacturers for the aircraft.

“We believe our chances are 100 percent, and I’ll give you the reasons why,” he told me in an interview at Bell headquarters Wednesday.

Bell is the only aircraft manufacturer in the mix that has designed, developed, fielded and maintained aircraft that can take off vertically like a helicopter and also fly fast horizontally like a plane, he said. Bell also has the ability to get the necessary regulatory certifications for aircraft of this type, and the company has the manufacturing infrastructure that’s “ready to go” for a project of this type, he said.

“We have that baseline, so that’s a differentiator for us,” Drennan said.

In addition, Bell has more experience than the other Uber collaborators with fly-by-wire — a system that replaces conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface that provides superior levels of safety, stability and control, he said.

“Fly-by-wire is going to be critical to these aircraft,” Drennan said. “They will be fly-by-wire, and we have a lot of experience there from our military side and commercial side.”

The Uber Elevate ride-hailing service is scheduled to debut in Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Dubai in 2020. From there, Uber plans to roll out the service in urban areas worldwide.

Making the aircraft will be big business — thousands of aircraft per year — for the company or companies that land it. The cost will be $1 million to $2 million per aircraft initially, but Uber hopes to bring that down to less than $500,000 as manufacturing efficiencies kick in.

The service will use vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, called VTOLs, that require no runway, are relatively simple to operate and maintain, and do not require expensive infrastructure, retired Air Force General and transportation futurist John E. Michel told me in an earlier interview.

The eventual goal is to have the aircraft fly autonomously — without a pilot — but they will operate with human pilots in the near term.

The biggest challenge with the technology is the electrification of the aircraft, Michel said. Electric VTOLs will operate more quietly than regular helicopters and won’t spew pollution into the dense urban areas they will fly over, he said, but the problem as of now is that they don't exist.

“Bell Helicopter is taking the hybrid path first,” he said. “It’s the gateway to all-electric. Once you have a hybrid system that has a gas-burning engine, a generator, fuel cells and electric transmission and motors, when the batteries are where they need to be from a power and density standpoint, you can take that heat burning engine, the fuel cells and generator and then plug them into the system.”

Bell is also exploring the possibility of jumping into the operating or booking side of the air taxi business, Drennan said.

“Today, when we think about air taxi, we know who we are on the equipment provider side," he said. "But could we be more? Could we be an operator? We are examining those business synergies as well to make sure that we understand the best way to capture the most revenue out of a new system like this."